


Sucks to be You

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, F/M, The Great Rumbelle Blow Off, What else do you want?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:10:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6421609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt:  Belle learns that her boss and secret crush Mr. Gold has never had a blowjob and has not had sex in over five years. She sets about to change those stats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sucks to be You

Belle walked at a brisk pace towards Mr. Gold’s Pawnshop and Antiquities, a small package tucked under her arm and the week’s mail held tightly in one hand. Fetching the mail from the post office was one of her duties as Mr. Gold’s part-time assistant and normally she didn’t mind the task, but the day’s rapidly declining weather made it particularly unpleasant. The sky had darkened to a steely gray with rolling clouds speeding in from the bay and the wind caused the signage hanging along Main Street’s storefronts to sway and creak perilously overhead. She hoped to get back to the shop before the rain began, but the wind was against her, slowing her progress.

She passed by the diner where Ruby was outside in the patio, stacking chairs, while Granny herself was closing the table umbrellas before they went cartwheeling out over the waterfront. Again.

She’d hurried across the street and had just reached the overhang of the shop, rushing through the door when the first, fat raindrops fell.

“Just me, Mr. Gold,” she said, dumping the mail on the counter she usually used when she was in the store. “It’s terrible outside,” she grumbled, shrugging off her coat and draping it over the tall chair she used.

“What’s that?” Mr. Gold said from the back room.

“There’s a big storm coming in,” she called out as she sorted everything out. The junk mail was filed directly into the recycle and the bills were put in a narrow metallic basket to be paid by Mr. Gold later. There were three checks to be deposited and one grubby envelope filled with money from Leroy with a misspelled note telling Gold exactly what he thought of him. She recorded it all in the store’s computer as “paid” for the month. That left the box, which she opened without a thought. Mr. Gold often received packages from all over and it was up to her to sort them out as with the regular mail.

This particular box, however, was puzzling in that there was no company name on the “from” section, just an address from someplace in California. Still, it was addressed to Mr. F. Gold so she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the clear tape along the seam, idly wondering what the F. stood for. No one in town knew his first name. Most people thought it was simply “Mister”, but she’d known the first initial ever since she started fetching the mail and kept a mental list of possibilities. Frederick? Fergus? Fennelope? Felix? Fuck Me?

She bit back a smile at the sound of Mr. Gold’s cane on the floorboards behind her, ducking her head to let her hair cover the side of her face when she couldn’t quite manage to keep a professional demeanor.

Mr. Gold had been such an enigma to her when she first started working for him, but she’d soon learned to see that the man wasn’t nearly as tough as he wanted people to think. He was strange and thoughtful and funny and sometimes, when he just happened to be staring in her direction, there was a crooked smile on his face that made her want to drop everything and kiss him square on that gorgeous mouth.

She tamped down on the urge to do something inappropriate like… grab him by the lapels of his fine wool jacket and do just that — kiss him, tongue and teeth and all — until he was a quivering mass at her feet. Maybe then he’d feel what she did when he was near.

A shudder went through her, thinking of it, and she felt her nipples harden against the flimsy bra she wore as a concession to public decency laws given her proclivity towards sheer blouses. She liked the light, airy fabric and she liked the way her boss’s eyes darkened when she showed up to work wearing them. It made her feel special, as if she’d broken through one of his barriers and that he wasn’t as untouchable as he wanted people to think.

“Are you okay, Miss French?” Gold asked in a low voice, his rich accent sending another tingling shiver down her spine.

God, he was so unfair.

She cleared her throat quietly, reminding herself that she was a grown woman and she could conceal her feelings as she’d been taught by dear-old dad so that no one, least of all Mr. Fucking Sexy Beast Gold, knew anything about them.

“Just a bit chilled from the storm, that’s all,” she replied, pulling out the packing slip and setting it aside before pulling out a ridiculously long rope of sausage-linked puffy airbags like a magician’s scarf out of a sleeve. She glanced at the item listed on the packing slip, frowning at it because that couldn’t be right, when her hand grabbed onto the thing and she pulled it out just as Mr. Gold settled himself by her side.

“What the—” she began as she tried to make sense out of the packaging in her hand, until her brain registered that, yes, her eyes really were looking at a sex toy. A sex toy for a man. It was difficult to tell in the hard, plastic packaging, but it looked like a tube in a sickly, pinkish color that passed as “flesh-toned” with a pair of open lips on one end and ridges along the side on the other. Finger holds, she realized, dimly, as she eyed the thing warily.

She read the name of the product out loud, sounding out the syllables as if she was relearning the language after being hit on the head with a mallet, “Stroker? Life-like suction action… What is this, some sort of… blowjob toy? I don't understand, Mr. Gold, why would anyone send this _here_?”

She felt her face heat up, not in embarrassment, but in anger. Whoever decided to prank her boss was going to be in for a world of hurt when she caught them.

“Oh.”

She barely heard Gold’s voice, her blood was pounding in her ears as she indignantly scanned the packing slip, scrutinizing the buyer’s information when it was snatched out of her hand.

“No— Hey! I have to figure out who did this!” she said, turning to him in outrage.

His own face was just as red, but the way his eyes darted from her to the toy to the door told her it was embarrassment more than anger and she didn’t understand his reaction. Surely they could talk about something like a sex toy without embarrassment. They were adults after all and sex was a natural thing, wasn’t it? His hands shook as he put the item back in the box then grabbed it, hugging it close to his chest.

“I’ll take care of it, Miss French,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. “Just… get back to cataloguing the, uh…” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “The dusting.”

Belle stared at him in confusion — he made no sense at all. Then it hit her like a freight train.

The sex toy was for him. He bought it. To use. For himself.

“Mr. Gold, are you…” ‘Horny’ was the only word she could think of because the main part of her brain kept zeroing in on the fact that her boss, that sweet, sexy, impossible man, was so desperate to fuck he needed to order a masturbation aid.

“Lonely?” she decided on in the end.

He looked at her then, shock written all over his features before it was quickly dispelled by a cool mask of indifference.

“Lonely? Why would I be _lonely_?” he asked, but his voice wobbled slightly at the end and Belle was certain that her hunch was right.

She licked her dry lips, trying to think of a way to ask the next thing without getting herself fired. “That can't feel like the real thing, you know,” she said, referring to the “just like a real mouth” claim on its lurid pink packaging.

“How would I know that?” he blurted out before he clamped his mouth shut with a snap, a look of abject horror on his face before that, too, was quelled with an effort. He looked down and away, stone-faced and his shoulders hunched.

She blinked twice. Today was full of revelations, not the least of which was that her forty-six year-old boss had apparently never had a blow job. But that couldn't be right, she thought. He had been married before. He had a child even. Surely at some point his ex-wife had wrapped her lips around his cock and blown his mind.

The words, “why didn’t you tell me” nearly fell from her lips, but she stopped herself before she uttered the stupid phrase. Why would he? And how? “Hey, Miss French, would you hand me the Kovel’s Guide and, by the way, I’ve never had my dick sucked. Whaddya think of that? Strange, huh?”

No, that was a subject that had no reason being brought up between two people who only had a working relationship. But, lately, for the past few months or so, her mind had been straying into forbidden territory, imagining Mr. Gold and herself grappling at each other in the back room, naked and sweaty and joined as they fucked like rabbits. This, and others in a similar vein, had become her favorite fantasy so much so that Mr. Gold had noted her absentmindedness and teased her about it, thinking that she was daydreaming about one of her books. She would always blush, but she never hinted at the real reason for her distraction: his ass and his wicked mouth and the way his eyes softened when he looked at her until she felt both hot and cold and she needed to touch herself in the back bathroom to quench the burning need inside her.

“Mr. Gold, I…”

He smiled, a tight, twisted thing that only moved his mouth a fraction of an inch, his brown eyes hurt and angry and embarrassed that she refused to give up. Belle felt sorry for it except for one tiny, but important, thing.

She caught her breath and thought about what she was going to say. There were definitely butterflies in her stomach fluttering around her stomach making her feel as if she might pass out at any moment. “I just mean… how can it be just as lifelike as it claims? It’s ludicrous.”

“It won’t,” he said curtly, his body stiff and shoulders squared as if bracing himself against the mockery he was sure to come. “But it doesn’t matter because I won’t know what I’ve missed, will I?”

The silence in the shop was emphasized by the wind howling outside as the storm raged on. The rain pattered against the windows in heavy splatters with each gust, but the lights stayed on even though they flickered every time the thunder sounded. No one would be coming in today. They were, effectively, isolated from the rest of the town.

She reached out slowly until her hand met his and she tugged at him gently. “You’ve _never_?”

A quick shake of the head, barely even moving, was her only answer.

Another dart of her tongue to wet her dry lips.  “But, your wife?”

He opened his mouth, and at first nothing came out, but he found his voice at last, tinny and still a little hurt that his secret was out and she knew. “Milah… didn't like to. She, ah… I’m-I’m-I'm uncircumcised and that, well, that turned her off.” His voice trailed away as his face turned a darker shade of red and he bowed his head, letting his hair fall in front of his eyes to shield himself from her staring.

He was looking down at their hands, as if awed that she was still touching him even though he was the hated Mr. Gold.

Belle frowned, confused even more. “But… What does a little foreskin have to do with it? It's not gross at all.”

“I imagine she thought different.”

She lifted her other hand to brush the hair back from his face, touching it for the first time and relishing at how soft it felt between her fingers, like downy feathers and just as fine. His eyes darted to hers in surprise at her touch, his eyes searching hers warily.

“But, it's a part of you. That should mean she would love it just as much as she loved the rest of you,” she told him, painting circles on the back of his hand.

He blinked rapidly, but Belle caught the brightness of tears before he managed to control himself once again and she gained another small insight into how the man worked. Armor. It was all armor. From the suits, to his deliberately abrasive business tactics, to the way he would only talk to people if he could verbally cut them down.

“I don't-I don't think she loved any of me at all,” he said, slowly, as he carefully removed his hand from her grip and straightened his shoulders.

“Is that why you divorced her?” She was treading on dangerous ground, but she had to know the why because she couldn't understand how anyone who knew the man standing before her could not love him.

“No,” he said, surprised. “No, she divorced me. Found another man.” Another attempt at a wry smile, another failure.

“Oh.” Well, that was insightful, she thought, then blurted out, “Was _he_ circumcised?” she asked, barely even able to move her lips, already ashamed to utter the words.

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared in disgust. “I didn't ask,” he said crisply, clearly annoyed with her. He tucked the box underneath his left arm and stood up straight. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I'm going to get some work done.”

He turned on his heel and swept back through the velvet curtain that separated the back from the showroom with his cane, Belle quickly following.

“But, you've dated since then, right? Surely someone must have—”

He wheeled around, angry now that she'd pursued him and pursued the subject. “No!” he snarled, the glint of his gold tooth shining as his lip curled back in anger. “No one. Do you understand?”

She chewed on her lip, envisioning what a loveless marriage looked like: the half-hearted embraces quickly dropped before he could hold her close, the begrudging, tight-lipped pecks pressed against his lips in an attempt to placate his need for affection, the long expanse of a back as she turned away from him in bed. His eyes told her everything. He was touch-starved, but he refused to acknowledge his need for affection. Her heart ached for the years of hurt he had gone through. She wanted to show him that he didn’t deserve to be alone and that someone very much wanted him — just as he was.

She should have been frightened at his outburst. She should have let the subject drop, do the compassionate thing and pretend this had never happened and gone back to her business, but Belle was never one to leave things alone. “But—”

“Stop!” He yelled, breathing hard, his eyes sparking with anger and hurt that she wouldn’t leave him alone. “Stop being sorry for me before—”

She held up her hand to stop the onslaught, talking over him in her haste to be understood. “I only meant how about I show you?”

Oh. She actually said it.

That stopped the pending tirade in its tracks. He blinked at her, stupidly. “What?” he whispered, his forehead wrinkled with confusion.

“I’ll show you what a blow job feels like. That way you can have a… side by side comparison.”

“Show me? How?”

“By sucking your dick,” she said slowly, making sure he clearly understood her. “With my mouth,” she added for clarification.

He stared at her, a tic at the swell of his cheek twitching ever-so-slightly was the only sign that he’d heard her. His face was composed into a steely resolve that would have intimidated her if she didn't know him any better. He was hurt and he needed her. She could do this for him. She needed it almost as much as he did.

“That's not necessary, I assure you,” he choked out, licking his lips, glancing away hastily.

“But I want to,” she said, stepping closer to him, lifting her chin up so he could see the earnest look of sincerity on her face. The man was skittish and she knew then that she could tell him that she wanted him, wanted his cock in her mouth — other places, too, but he never trusted words much. Words were easy to manipulate and stretch until the truth was so distorted that it may as well not even exist. But, actions… actions could be believed.

She cupped his crotch and he dropped the box with a clatter in his shock. He was hard and hot and straining against his trousers and, by the feel of him, he was packing a respectable size underneath his clothing.

“I don’t find foreskin offensive,” she murmured. “Did you know that there are thousands of nerves located there? That sex—that oral stimulation feels better to men who aren’t cut? Those poor circumcised men don’t know what they’re missing.”

He swallowed loudly as he watched her with suspicious eyes. “I’ve, uh, I’ve read that before, yeah,” he said, his voice broken as he tried to catch his breath when she firmly stroked her hand against him. “Oh, god,” he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut at the contact.

“Don’t you want to find out how good it feels?” she asked, giving him the choice. She refused to take it from him, but she pleaded with him to give in, to let her show him how much she wanted to do this for him. He twitched against her and she felt an answering pull deep down in her belly, an aching need to be stretched and filled by him. She hoped that his turnaround time was just as impressive as the cock in her hand.

His breath came in heavy gasps as sweat beaded up on his forehead and she watched his face as he raged with an inner debate. He was trying to talk himself out of it, telling himself that it was better to never know what he was missing rather than find out for certain only to never have it again, but Belle was determined to let him have this pleasure as often as he wanted. She liked giving head. She relished the power it gave her as she brought a man to his knees, loved the feeling of soft skin over rigid muscle filling her mouth and the salty taste of semen flooding over her tongue. She’d suck him off every day if that would wipe the look of distrust off his face.  

She stroked him some more, wrapping her fingers around him as much as she could through the layers of fabric, squeezing tightly and letting go, listening with a thrilling glee to the low moan that he probably wasn’t aware that he was making.

“I want to, Mr. Gold. I want to so much,” she whispered in his ear. “Let me suck you off.”

A whimper escaped his tightly pressed lips as his eyes flew open to search hers and she knew he’d given in.

“Yes.” The word came out in a shaky hiss and he sucked the air back through his teeth as she slowly unzipped his trousers, her eyes never leaving his.

She let his pants fall in a puddle on the floor then hooked her thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, carefully pulling them down over his straining erection and leaving them stretched tightly around his thighs. His cock sprang free, bouncing against her hand and she smiled to herself when she saw how large it was. There was nothing wrong with him at all. His foreskin covered the head, but a gentle experimental tug showed her that it was loose enough to peel back without effort. He was hot and heavy in her hand, twitching with every feather-soft stroke of her fingers.

She licked her lips, already anticipating the taste of him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quickly, making a move to cover himself, but she stopped him with gentle hands.

“Why? You’re beautiful.” She glanced behind him towards the daybed he kept for those long nights when he was too tired to make the drive back to his house. Damn, she should have dragged him there first before she stripped him of his pants. “Let’s move things to the bed.”

He stumbled backwards while she guided him, settling him gently against the bed where he sat with a thump, his legs spread out before him, still caught up in his trousers and boxers, which he hastily shimmied off.

She took a shuddering breath, biting her lip as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse in front of him. He watched her, gobsmacked for a moment before he followed suit, kicking off his shoes and shucking off his jacket and vest wildly before he attacked his own shirt, completely forgetting the tie around his neck until he tried to shrug it off. He struggled with it until she placed her hands on his, taking them off his tie and put them on her naked breasts, squeezing his hands tightly until he got the point and began massaging them himself.

“That feels so good,” she told him, standing naked above him with her legs on either side of his knees. “My nipples like to be sucked...”

“Oh, fuck,” he whimpered before taking her hint and licked at a tightly peaked nipple before sucking it into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth in a way that made her knees buckle.

She cupped his head and held him against her. “Yes, that’s good,” she gasped, kissing the top of his head, nuzzling his soft hair with her nose, inhaling the heady scent of his shampoo before she tilted her head back as the tight, pulling sensation of his mouth on her breasts distracted her.

She held him there, panting with every pull, every nibble and swipe of his tongue against her flesh until she pulled his head away with a gasp. Sitting down heavily on his lap, she brought her mouth crashing down onto his, all teeth and noses until he tilted his head and their mouths melded together. He drank down her moans, rubbing at her back with calloused hands, reaching in between them to tweak at her nipples with a sharp pinch, making her buck against him.

For a man who hadn’t seen any action in a while, he knew exactly what to do and Belle wondered if he’d laid awake at night, too, imagining what it would be like to fuck her just as she’d thought about fucking him. Maybe he was ticking off a mental checklist of things he’d like to do to her. The thought made her groan louder and she dipped her tongue in his mouth, teasing and tasting him. His hips bucked up against hers insistently, bringing her back to the present.

“How long has it been since you’ve made love?” she asked, placing sweet kisses along his jawline, rubbing the day’s stubble with her lips.

“F-five years,” he told her, pulling away and hiding his face along her neck, holding her close to him tight in his arms. “Five years, Belle. Oh, fuck!”

“That’s too long,” she agreed, rubbing herself against him, while she tried to think about the best way to go about this without having him shoot off in her face the moment her mouth wrapped around him. “How does this feel?” she asked, rubbing herself against his prick, the hard length against her swollen clit sending shocks of lightning-hot pleasure through her body.

He squeezed her tighter. “Gonna come—” he gasped out before he trailed off in a low keening as she stopped wiggling against him.

“Shhh,” she whispered, stroking his hair back so she could see his heated face. He looked wrecked, completely undone and confused that this was happening and that she wasn’t yelling at him, telling him that he was worthless. She kissed his lips softly then got up, dropping to the floor, spreading his legs wide with the flats of her hands, the muscles in his thighs trembling underneath her palms.

She looked down at his cock, jutting up and bobbing, waiting for any sort of attention from her, then glanced up at his ever growing hopeful face. She’d always found him to be handsome, but she’d never found him sexier than when he was staring down at her, slack-jawed, his pupils blown black and his nostrils flared as he panted heavily, waiting for her next move. She kept her eyes firmly on his while she lowered her head and pressed a soft kiss against the tip of his cock, smiling against his flesh as his eyes closed and his teeth clenched in an effort to keep from coming right then. The fold of skin that disgusted his ex-wife was snug against the sensitive head, but it wasn’t off-putting in the least. She’d have to pay careful attention to it when she finally got down to business, but the way Gold had begun to shake told her that she needed to slow down or else they’d need to find out firsthand how quick his recovery time was.

She would have to tease it out of him then, draw it out as long as she could before she allowed him to come. She scooted as close as she could and rose up on her knees until one of her breasts grazed his prick, drawing out another shaky hiss from him. Adjusting her stance, she captured his cock and nestled it between her breasts, squeezing them around it as much as she was able, close and soft and tight. He whimpered at the contact, jerking his hips and rubbing himself against her while she used the flat of her tongue to lick at the soft, fleshy head with every upward thrust.  

“My nipples,” she said, panting with effort. “Pinch them. Please!”

His eyelids fluttered open, but he obeyed her, his fingers finding her hardened peaks and pinching them tightly, rolling and pulling at them gently while she slowly moved up and down against his cock, leading him into a frenzied state.

He was gasping harshly, gulping down air, gripping her nipples in vice-like pinches that left her moaning against the head of his cock and she nearly let him come like that, but she pulled away, gently removing his hands from her.

“Why’d you stop,” he asked frantically, his wild eyes finding hers in a panic.

“I promised you a blow job,” she said before ducking her head to run the flat of her tongue along the shaft of his cock. He yelped in shock. “You didn’t think I was gonna back out of it did you?”

He fell flat on his back, his hands scrabbling at the covers as he tried to both back away and thrust into her mouth. “Nnnggghh.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I’m going to lick you,” she said, demonstrating with a long, wet swipe along his heated flesh from his balls up to the tip of his cock. “And suck,” she murmured, slipping the tip in, sucking hard before letting it fall back out with a slippery pop. “And nibble…” She gently grazed her teeth along the hated foreskin, plucking at it with her lips and swirling her tongue in circles just underneath and around the extra sensitive head until he cried out with a fierce cry. “And _love_ , until you give in.”

He pulled himself up on his elbows, his hair sticking out wildly as he lifted his head to stare down at her with fevered eyes. She smiled widely at the sight he presented, completely undone with his shirt half off and his tie still firmly in place around his neck, the tail end of it trailing down his chest like an arrow pointing straight at his dick.

“Give in?” he asked, still gasping for breath.

“Mmm. You’re not a monster, Mr. Gold. You just have an extra inch or two of very yummy, very sensitive skin that needs some attention and I intend to be the one to do it.” She licked her lips, moistening them in anticipation of what was to come. “Do you want to watch?”

He nodded his head eagerly, staring at her in wonder even as she stroked his length in her small hand.

“Then lean back and let me make you feel good,” she said, before wrapping her lips around the tip of his cock, sucking him in as far as she could.

She felt his guttural moan deep within her own core, then the answering flood of wetness coating her swollen folds. She reached between her legs to rub the area to the left of her clit to help herself along, the primal noises Gold urging her on. She poured everything she felt for him into this act, tracing the fat veins with her tongue and swirling around the head before taking him all the way in until she nearly gagged, pulling back with a long rope of saliva anchoring her mouth to him. She gasped for breath then dove back in, circling his balls before licking her way back up to the tip to take him in again.

She slowly pulled the foreskin down, exposing the head, and gave it a light lick with the flat of her tongue, stopping when he abruptly jumped away, his chest heaving with gasping, resonant moans.

“Too much?” she asked, concerned that he was too sensitive without the protective foreskin, but he shook his head, his hair wild around his face and his teeth bared as he gulped for air.

“No,” he rasped out. “No, it’s… it’s good. I just didn’t know it would feel… feel like that.”

She made a sympathetic noise, rubbing her thumb over the slit, watching as he bit his lip in a futile attempt to keep quiet. “Do you want me to cover it up again?”

“No!” he cried out, reaching out with a shaking hand, scraping her scalp with his nails as he tangled his fingers in her curls. “No, k-keep going, please!”

His grip in her hair grounded her and she smiled up at him before going back down on him, making small humming noises every time his hips bucked up. Before long he loosened his hold and his hand moved down to tenderly cup her cheek, his fingers softly fluttering along her skin before it fell away to grasp at the bed in a white-knuckled grip that pulled and tore at the sheets.

It was sloppy and noisy and raw and Belle wanted nothing more than make him come in her mouth. She ignored her burning knees and aching jaw — there was only Mr. Gold and the way his hips jerked and the delicious way his cock tasted in her mouth and the inelegant sounds that emerged from the back of his throat. He was hot and heavy and hard and she moaned with him, her own need forgotten as she showed him how wonderful it felt to be wanted. His cock grew impossibly hard inside her mouth as his balls drew up tight and firm and his thighs quivered next to her head just before he came at last with a brutal shout that echoed in the empty store.

She drank him down, lapping at him until he collapsed, spent and gasping on the bed for a moment before he sprang back up on one arm, his chest heaving and his eyes worriedly searching her face for any signs of distress.

“Belle,” he breathed, watching her carefully, his eyes widening as she pulled her hand away from her sex and showed him her sticky fingers. “You—?”

She licked at the corner of her mouth, smiling slyly and scooting closer. “Nearly,” she began, cutting off with a yelp when he pulled her up on top of him with surprising strength.

His fingers delved between her legs, finding her wet and ready, and he shoved two inside her at once, curling them until they reached a spot that made her cry out in gasping sobs. Another finger, then a fourth pumping and stroking until she shook in his arms, coming hard on his hand with a flood of moisture pooling in the cup of his palm. He stayed inside her, gently coaxing her until her shivering passed and she could lift her head and look at him with bleary, fuckstuck eyes.

He carefully removed his fingers and then licked the sticky wetness off of them, his eyes never leaving hers until every last drop was cleaned up and he lay back on the pillow staring up at the ceiling, a bit dazed and a bit giddy.

“You’re right, Belle,” he said, stroking the back of her hair softly, spreading it out over her back in a fan. “That was much better than any device.”

She giggled, hiding her face against his chest as she caught her breath. “I told you so.”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, then, “Thank you. It was… it was… I can’t even describe what that was. Words don’t even compare. It’ll be hard to go back to-to this,” he said gesturing away from them.

Belle lifted her head to follow and saw The Stroker he’d ordered lying on the ground where it fell. “But, you don’t need that,” she said, turning back to him in confusion.

He shook his head, closing his eyes tightly as he turned his head away. “I’m not fooling myself. I know my cock has nothing to do with it. People don’t like me. I don’t give them any reason to so I don’t expect anyone to… to…”

“I just did,” Belle reminded him in a tiny voice, looking up at him, hurt.

His head whipped back, his eyes searching hers. “You did,” he agreed, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear. “You did.”

“I like you, Mr. Gold. Always have…” she bit her lip to keep the hot, angry tears from falling. “I don’t think you’re worthless,” she whispered.

“But I am.”

She shook her head, mutely, ducking her head against his chest again.

“Belle, look at me,” he said sharply, lifting her chin with a finger until she complied. “I’m worthless, I know that. But you? You are like starshine and sunrise and a-a-a fucking train headlight down a black tunnel. I—” He broke off, licking at his lips as he searched for the right thing to say. Perhaps there was no right thing, there was only the way his eyes sought hers and the hard, desperate kiss that followed when he saw the tears glistening in her eyes.

“You’re too special to me,” he murmured against her lips.

“And what makes you think you are any less special to me?” she asked. “What makes you think I want this to be the only time we make love?”

“Love?” he asked, leaning back, his eyes blinking rapidly.

She gave him a tremulous smile, feeling vulnerable for the first time all day. “If you’ll have it. If you’ll let it happen,” she told him, thickly.

“I’m gonna fuck up,” he countered, his answering smile a thin, crooked line.

“I expect it,” she told him, but she hugged him closer. “No one’s perfect.”

“I beg to differ,” he whispered in her hair and then they were silent with only the turbulent storm outside to keep them company while they held each other through the night.


End file.
